From left to right, Juan Hernandez, from Santa Clara, Corrin Rankin, from Redwood City, and Kim Womack, from Los Gatos, pose for a portrait aboard Rankin’s yacht in Redwood City, Calif., on Thursday, Jan. 12, 2017. All three are heading to Washington D.C. for president elect Donald Trump’s inauguration.

They form a rare minority — a small and often overlooked group of supporters for President-elect Donald Trump in a largely liberal region that very publicly supported Hillary Clinton.

var _ndnq = _ndnq || []; _ndnq.push([’embed’]);

Now, a contingent of an estimated 300,000 Bay Area residents who voted for Trump are feeling vindicated as they prepare to jet off to Washington, D.C., for the inauguration ceremony, joining thousands in marking a new era in the nation’s capital — the beginning of an already controversial presidency.

“We did anything and everything to get him elected and it’s so exciting that the people spoke and elected him,” said Kim Womack, who started the Santa Clara County Trump campaign with only 23 volunteers, often working 20 hours in a day. By the end of the election, the group had 975 volunteers, the Los Gatos resident said.

“What’s fantastic is that we now have this opportunity to go to D.C. It’s the chance of a lifetime.”

As some Bay Area residents add finishing touches to scathing posters and polish chants to protest the inauguration, others like local businesswoman Corrin Rankin and Log Cabin Republican Juan Hernandez discuss the details of their trip with the giddiness of someone going on a long-planned vacation or attending the concert of the year.

They’re part of an even smaller group — Bay Area minorities who supported the president-elect, despite his vows to deport millions of undocumented residents and plans to create a Muslim registry and to restrict refugee resettlement into the United States. In the months leading up to the election, his supporters were labeled outcasts and even sell-outs within their communities, no longer part of “their own” because of their political beliefs.

“It was really hard for a really long time to be a Trump supporter, especially in the Bay Area. We all received more than our fair share of push-back from strangers, family and friends,” said Rankin, who chaired the state’s African-Americans for Trump coalition. “But you know in your heart that this is what’s right.

“To have the rest of the country vote for Trump and especially the Democratic states — to see them turn around and vote for Donald Trump — I feel validated,” she added.

Juan Hernandez threw his support behind Trump early on, helping Womack launch Trump’s local campaign. Things have come full circle for the 38-year-old, who last June was beaten outside a Trump rally in downtown San Jose.

But come Friday, Hernandez will be surrounded by a sea of Trump supporters.

“To follow this all the way through and see it happen…it’s really exciting,” he said. “This is someone who we actually believe is going to change America.”

Hernandez, like Rankin and many fellow Trump supporters, said Trump’s stance on illegal immigration and national security appealed to him.

Though Latino support for Trump in the election was low — about 29 percent voted for Trump, according to exit polls — more Latinos voted for Trump than they did for Mitt Romney in 2012.

“It adds more dimension because we ‘should not’ be voting for him. We shouldn’t be Republican, we shouldn’t be voting for Trump. So we’re going against everything,” Hernandez said.

About 600 people are expected at Latino Inaugural 2017 on Thursday, a black-tie gala at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel.

“It’s important that we highlight the fact that Latinos did come out to support Donald Trump,” said Jonathan Espinoza, a California-based spokesman for the event.

“Latinos are conservative, we are a faith-based community and a family-oriented community. To have a president represent our values is why he appealed to many Latinos.”

Marco Gutierrez flaunted his invitation to the president’s inauguration on Twitter, with a message that said in part, “Why would a racist like Donald Trump consider the presence of an immigrant like me for the biggest day of his life!”

Gutierrez, a Discovery Bay resident who co-founded the group “Latinos for Trump,” made waves last year after telling an MSNBC reporter that there would be “taco trucks on every corner,” if Trump wasn’t elected president. Gutierrez also said his culture is “imposing, and it’s causing problems.”

For Rankin, it’s all water under the bridge. Despite losing some friends because of her support for Trump, Rankin is looking onward, ready to watch the candidate she supported fiercely take office in just a few days.

Tatiana Sanchez covers race, demographics and immigration for the Bay Area News Group. She got her start in journalism in the California desert, where she covered the marginalized immigrant communities of the eastern Coachella Valley. Before heading north, Sanchez spent a year as immigration reporter at the San Diego Union-Tribune, where she covered the region's multicultural communities, social justice topics and life on the U.S. -Mexico border. A Bay Area native, she received a master's in journalism from Columbia University. In 2017, Sanchez was part of a team of East Bay Times reporters awarded the Pulitzer Prize for breaking news coverage of the Ghost Ship fire in Oakland. She's based in San Jose.

More in Politics

Our nation’s education secretary recently suggested that to prevent the next school massacre perhaps teachers should be permitted to carry guns. People took to social media to roar that many schools can’t even afford pencils, let alone armaments.